Borders were a big improvement in Legends, because the battlefront has finally been reduced to something more manageable. Because of the way empires build up, it is now far more practical to create defense in-depth. Knowing how to use Automation correctly is key, here, and I feel from reading many posts on these forums that some people are mistaking a complicated system for a broken one.

For all of that, we have Fleet Posture. Which in my opinion is the best improvement in the Legends expansion. By mixing fleet posture with automation and advisor settings, you can create any number of redundant and effective schemes at any desired level of micromanagement. There are a million right ways to use Fleet Posturing, and the only wrong way is to not use it. If DW ever gets a multiplayer component, understanding how to coordinate your armadas with the Fleet Posture tools will be key.

Personally, I don't like to micromanage. I only like to do as much as I have to do to make sure that my unattended fleets are behaving themselves. Before Legends I would usually leave Fleet Automation on auto, and war and attacks to suggest. This would ensure that my fleets were usually actively engaged in something productive, but also allowed me to pick and choose from dozens of little fleets to control, and then only press automate when I want to hand it back over to the AI. Fleet Posture allows you to do this in a much more elegant way, by telling you how to give your AI focus. Before, it was like trying to tell someone who speaks a different language that they really "needed to not do that, please, and instead do this." Now, you can do exactly that.

For the game i'm going to use as an example, I'm playing a 1400 Star 10x10 Varied Clusters map. Everything else is normal. Ship Design is on auto, fleet formation is manual, and war and attacks are set to suggest. I got dealt a rough hand in this game, because it started me right next to some angry Slukens, who took their first opportunity to declare war on me very quickly. They almost had me, but then my Kiadian neighbors joined in on my side. Now, the Slukens are not really a threat, and I have practically unlimited gas from the gas clouds in Kiadian territory. I waged a brief war against the (pink) Ugnari, but got a peace deal pretty fast since they were at war with their Mortalen neighbors (who for some reason have Way of Darkness government). I really like the way this game has turned out so far. Consider the map of me (red) and my immediate neighbors (Kiadians are blue):

So how do I get my fleets to handle all of this efficiently? In RotS, unless you wanted to micromanage, your only real chance at success was to build way too many ships. Now, that's still a good idea (wish the AI was more aggressive about it) but with fleet posturing you can refine this process considerably on a very large scale, very easily. Did you see all the good spots in that last picture that really looked like they're just perfect for having a fleet sit on top of them? I did too.

Each one of those circles represents a fleet that looks kind of like this:

Notice the numbered buttons? I'm going to explain why they are so important:

1.) Set Home Base. I like to do this directly from the fleet screen right after I queue ships up for construction, but if you need to change home bases in a pinch this is a much better way to do it. Simply click the button, then click on anything even remotely base-like that you own. This important, since most of the fleet posture functions work off of your home base.

2. Set Attack Target. This is not to be confused with manually clicking attack on a target. When you set an attack target, and an appropriate range, your ship will kill everything within that range of the target whenever it is not doing anything better. If I'm going to attack someone with an attack fleet, I first hit button number 3 so that it shows the sword icon (meaning the fleet is in attack mode), then I manually tell my fleet to attack the planet, structure, or fleet that I want destroyed, then I hit the automate button which ensures that after the mission is done it will continue to look after itself (and follow the directive issued by the attack posture/range) while I tend to other things.

3.) Flips between Attack/Defend modes. This is important. If your ship is on auto, it will always look after itself. But that's not to say that it will best look after the needs of the empire. If you have a fleet on auto, make sure you differentiate between attack and defend, and appropriate range. It affects how your ships act in your absense, which is very important.

4.) Range. Most of the time i'll use Sector, but there are plenty of specialized situations in which you might want something smaller. I usually set my transport fleets to attack posture/attack target only, so they don't get mixed up in other affairs while shuffling reenforcements to the various planets I'm invading.

5.) Automate. For the most part, this button is self-explanatory, but it is very important. An automated fleet will take the initiative at times, but to properly direct that initiative you must use fleet postures. If you're not the kind of person that uses automation at all, then fleet posturing is probably not that big a deal to you--but the impact it has on being able to multi-task in war is incredible.

So, knowing what we know now, we could send a fleet to cause trouble in the Ugnari heartland. Notice that since the fleet is on attack posture, and the range is set to nearby systems, and my attack target is set to that Ugnari world in the middle of my red "Attack Zone" that we get a nice red circle showing our limits of engagement, and a red dotted line showing the base from which my attack is originating.

But we don't have to stop there... I'm playing an Atuukian Fuedalism in this game, which means numbers are what I have! Let's try something more comprehensive....

Hell, the Kiadians have my back, right? Why not send everything!

I suppose before Legends I always found using my fleets on a truly strategic level to be the hardest thing about Distant Worlds. Now, with fleet posturing, it's as easy as an overlay, and the galactopedia entry is pretty lacking (it's got about two sentences for itself under fleets). My hope is that new players might read this and be a bit less intimidated or confused.

Good to know. I assumed Range was always range from the Home System, not range from the Attack Target, so I'm definitely glad you cleared that up for me since that's a huge difference. As for the circle overlays, are you saying blue circles are Defense fleets, and red circles are Attack fleets?

Good to know. I assumed Range was always range from the Home System, not range from the Attack Target, so I'm definitely glad you cleared that up for me since that's a huge difference. As for the circle overlays, are you saying blue circles are Defense fleets, and red circles are Attack fleets?

Yes. A fleet in Defense Mode will have a blue circle. It can be system-sized all the way up to sector-sized. Attack fleets are a little trickier. In order to get the posture overlay to display, you need to CLICK on the ATTACK TARGET button, which will change your cursor to a different icon. Then, click on your target and then set your range. It will show as a red dotted line from your home base to your attack target, and the attack target will be surrounded by the red circle.

As far as I can tell, a fleet set to posture like this will not do anything automatically (other than the normal stuff) unless you set it to automatic. So the point would be to set up a more refined and elaborate plan of attack for all the ships that you are not planning on micro-managing. On really big maps, this allows you to do some truly massive-scale movements and be reasonably assured that it will go according to plan--and best of all, the plan is displayed on the screen!

Those screenshots up there are just a small, small example of what you can do. I'll post some more over the next couple of days showing different examples of how I set up my defenses and assaults using posturing, if you think that would be at all helpful.

Fleet posture and fleet stance are different functions. Fleet posture is used when you set the mode to automatic and allows you to give commands as you have listed. Fleet stance, on the other hand, are more basic and are used when the fleets are not in automatic mode. They refer to how a fleet will react when not performing an action (again, not in automatic mode). Default fleet stances can be modified under options, empire settings.

Fleet posture and fleet stance are different functions. Fleet posture is used when you set the mode to automatic and allows you to give commands as you have listed. Fleet stance, on the other hand, are more basic and are used when the fleets are not in automatic mode. They refer to how a fleet will react when not performing an action (again, not in automatic mode). Default fleet stances can be modified under options, empire settings.

Please correct me if I am wrong but that is from my observations.

No, you're right. Everything I said is using the AI-Designed Ships. If you design your own ships, you will need to pay close attention to the behavioral settings you choose. Good call!

Alright, so I wanted to emphasize that the examples at the top are pretty minimal compared to what you COULD do.

I'm in the middle of the ultimate game of attrition: 1400 Stars, Abundant Colonies!, Very Expensive Tech, 19 Random Young Empires, Hard Difficulty, Everything Enabled, Victory Conditions are 100%/50%/50% with Racial on, threshold at 75%, and they don't apply for 99 years. We're about twenty years in and the colonization phase is only just beginning to wind down. At first, my defense grid was dozens of 4-10 ship fleets, but now they're covered by overlapping combat fleets of 15-20 ships in the critical places.

Here's the plain view of my empire.

Here's the big view with fleet posture on. Notice the overlapping sectors in critical zones, and the coverage in gas clouds.

Here's a zoomed in view on the various parts of my empire.

I expect major world war-ish hostilities to commence within 20 years, and I will certainly post pictures of my attack plans. By that point it should include hundreds of ships, and several dozen different routes of attack.

Wow. This is incredibly great and important information. How do you figure stuff like this out?

Anyway, please STICKY this. This is complicated and will require some practice for most of us (the slow ones, such as me) to get our heads around this important feature.

G Cube, that is truly great. Thanks

Actually, it's complete coincidence. When they said "Fleet Posturing" was included in legends I thought to myself "could this be what I think it is?" Turned out it was exactly what I thought it was, and the hardest part was figuring out how to best use it with all the OTHER systems.

The only way I could make this sound as easy as it should be would be to make a let's play showing how I do my whole military-industrial-complex... That may come some day, but for now you have to believe me when I say it's the easiest part of the game for me now. Much easier than, say, Ship Design.

Awesome. The screen shots with the narrative really did it for me. Excellent format, thanks.

You bet. I love doing AARs, but rarely have the dedication to follow-through until the end. This is a happy medium!

*A very good improvement to fleet posture would be a few more sub-postures for further refinement. If I could set about half the fleets in those screenshots to something like "Interdict Shipping" or "Harass Weaker Fleets Only" or even "Guerrila"... or on the defensive side "Pirate Hunting" or "Supply Line Defense" ect...

By adding those in to the existing system, you could allow for complete ease-of-management (even ease-of-micro-management) for in-depth strategems of nearly any variety. As it is now, all those are still possible by babysitting... but having specific sub-postures would be too freaking cool.

Very helpful. It looks daunting visually, but I'll take your word it's simple to execute. If you have additional thoughts on how home colony (and refueling issues) tie in that would be even more helpful.

The sub-postures would be nice, but I think they fall into two levels of difficulty:

1. Anti-piracy, commerce raiding, escort/civ protection duty, trade route patrol, and similar fairly one-dimensional and simple directives that would be easy for the AI to handle and with results unlikely to generate player complaints. I'd love to design fast anti-pirate ships and have them used for the right purpose.

2. Operations against enemy fleets and bases, where relative strength is a snapshot only since both sides have forces in motion that could easily turn the tables.

Planetary invasions fall in the same category unless the friendly forces have full control of space against intervening opponents - to be prudent the AI would otherwise have to assign a large margin of safety in preparing the assault (which players may complain is excessive).

I hesitate to comment too much on this, because of my extensive use of automation. In some ways, those of you who delve into every component of every base and every ship might find this even easier than me! On the other hand, maybe I only find this simple because I have a strange approach to the Automation. However, for what it's worth, here's kind of how I got from one planet to that giant sea of blue ven diagrams:

I begin on starting, always. I also usually have average home system. I don't normally play with abundant colonies, although my strategy works equally well (better and worse in some ways) with that setting.

I start by clicking that amazing unified construction button and building 10 escorts and a 7 frigate fleet. I then turn that 7 frigate fleet into the fleet that will be defending my home system and sector. It is automated, and AI-designed. If something comes up, I can select it and micro-manage it for whatever I need, then hit automate and it will resume its post automatically. This is the BEST part about defensive fleet postures. It lets you use a fleet for something crazy, then just flip a switch to send it back where it needs to be doing what it needs to be doing.

As my empire expands, I build more ships using the same unified construction screen. Whenever I see a spot that needs a blue circle around it I go into my military ships screen and find a few un-fleeted ships that suit my needs and aren't too far away, then I turn them into the next defensive fleet. By assuring that new ships are always set to auto, and making sure I have a surplus of automated and unfleeted ships, I always have a reserve to pick from.

I never run into resource or fuel problems as long as I make sure to not over-build. When your ships are postured defensively, they will occasionally go somewhere on their own to refuel or retrofit. You can ensure that your postures are infinitely more effective by concentrating them near gas mining stations, resupply ships, or large space ports. It is worth noting that I upgrade my starting spaceport to a Large one (AI-designed) as soon as I can afford it. It is also worth noting that by using the lower-left-hand tab to keep an eye on expensive projects (new colony ships, starports, whatever) you can multi-task by focussing on something else while having a little reminder of progress in the corner. That way you don't accidentally over-reach by building, say, 10 new explorers while you're still looking for resources to finish that first colony ship.

All this advice probably seems very simplistic if you're the kind of person that manages your own designs and all that. What that goes to show, I suppose, is that the AI can be trusted if you are willing to treat it nicely--but it certainly does still require occasional coaxing, and will occasionally elicit a raised eyebrow despite all my best efforts. For the most part, though, these postures are wicket effective. Pirates die immediately within that blue sea, and so does anything else. I had a silvermist outbreak in the southernmost cluster of colonies and my automated/postured fleets killed it before it could destroy more than two of my worlds with zero intervention from me. The postures work! But they are not fool-proof--you do still have to ensure existing infrastructure. A fleet based in the middle of no-where that has to fly for months to re-fuel every couple weeks isn't going to be much use.

Can't find anything useful in the Galactopedia, but I have been trying to use mission, engagement, and posture orders to keep my battle fleet assembled in an enemy system but not attacking their homewolrd defenses. Fleet formation is manual. The ships are not automated. But the ships are individually hopping in and trying to get them to escape and go back to the other planet is a challenge. I'm still not clear on how the settings interrelate.

Any confirmed data what mix of settings are needed to keep a fleet waiting around a planet, or in a spot in space, where they may engage enemy who come at them but don't go suicidal?

Can't find anything useful in the Galactopedia, but I have been trying to use mission, engagement, and posture orders to keep my battle fleet assembled in an enemy system but not attacking their homewolrd defenses. Fleet formation is manual. The ships are not automated. But the ships are individually hopping in and trying to get them to escape and go back to the other planet is a challenge. I'm still not clear on how the settings interrelate.

Any confirmed data what mix of settings are needed to keep a fleet waiting around a planet, or in a spot in space, where they may engage enemy who come at them but don't go suicidal?

Thanks!

Simply having a fleet on manual set to patrol planet should do the trick. They'll stay there in forever, only leaving to refuel, and then come back. At least, according to Erik. Fleet posture should not even be needed for this one, but it would be helpful to set a defensive posture with nearby systems or sector range just so you can have a visual reference on the overlay.

In other news, this game is getting MASSIVE! Remember, the settings are Abundant Colonies, Hard AI, 19 Random Empires, 1400 Stars, 10x10, Irregular, galaxy age set to young. I started with just a normal one-planet start. It has been challenging! I have MASSIVELY out-built the AI, but is at least 75% defensive fleets. I'm playing Wekkarus, and I was blessed with a really good spot on the map, so I'm RICH. Which means I went all out on my fleets, and my fleet postures! It would be madness to try and get a picture of all the different parts of the map right now, but here's a picture of my empire page, and a map of the galaxy. Once I finally start a war with someone (none so far, since part of my victory condition is having the least time at war.. however i've killed three legendary pirate bases, and there are three more active in the galaxy) then I will post a completely comprehensive guide to using fleet postures OFFENSIVELY. Just bear with me for awhile, though.. this game is so huge that I'm playing at a consistent .5 Speed during peace-time. Also, my neighbors (mostly the teekans and ikkuro) have been harassing the hell out me without actually declaring war. Fleet posture doesn't seem to respond to ships that belong to an empire that's just messing you with you and trying to make you mad, so you're left in the same situation as before when empires start doing that--which is to politely ignore it, or micro-manage the instant death of the interlopers.

*Man, I hope those aren't as blurry for you guys as they are for me.. photobucket seems to have messed those up somehow. If you can't read the bottom one, my firepower is almost 60k, I have about 30 colonies, and 50-ish fleets. My three Main Battle Fleets all have a total firepower of over 4500, except for my Phantom Fleet (courtest of kicking some Legendary Pirate butt) which has around 6000. I'm itching for a war, but the time is not quite right yet.

I have Shakturi storyline enabled, and that will be the real test for fleet posture on this scale. I've never beaten them before, and in order to win I might have to start designing my own ships later on.. something i've never done in earnest.

However, I'm hoping to get at least one complete and total blitzkrieg before the refugees show up. Since part of my victory condition is spending the least amount of time at war in the galaxy, being able to use fleet posture COMBINED with efficient micro-management will be key in achieving total domination over an enemy empire quickly. Ikkuro look like the most likely target... they've been making me mad. Teekans too, but they give me an unbelievably large amount in trade so I can overlook it. The victory conditions of the Wekkarus, combined with the harsh victory conditions in this game (100% Territory, 50% Population, 50% Economy, Racials Enabled, Victory Threshold at 75%) mean that this is sure to be an incredibly long and drawn out affair.. but perfect for seeing how fleet postures can work on the biggest stage.

What a spectacular thread! In my one and only game of Legends (whose AAR you've seen, Cube), I've been running a tiny empire with only 4 fleets, so I do most everything manually. But even I found it handy to be able to set the "range" of my fleets. But I didn't comprehend the depth of the other fleet posture options. I will play with them more.

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You bet. I love doing AARs, but rarely have the dedication to follow-through until the end. This is a happy medium!

I do hope you keep us updated on your game, even if you don't do a full-blown AAR. I know from experience that AARs can turn into big projects! :) I tried one massive game like that in vanilla DW, and I never came close to finishing, but I sure did have fun with it while it lasted. I trust you're enjoying it? I remember enjoying vanilla DW, but Legends has really swept me up. (Although I imagine I'll be playing less once Star Wars: The Old Republic launches.)

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It is also worth noting that by using the lower-left-hand tab to keep an eye on expensive projects (new colony ships, starports, whatever) you can multi-task by focussing on something else while having a little reminder of progress in the corner.

I'm curious: Which tab do you mean? The lower-left-corner of the screen, the one that shows a picture of the ship/world/base you have selected? How do you monitor construction progress from that panel?

And a further question. How do you defend all the mining bases and whatnot in your territory? Do you put a couple of warship on patrol around each base, or do you use fleets in defense mode, with overlapping circles? Or both?

Oh, it's a ton of fun. The biggest thing to remember is that at this scale the game becomes more of a Hearts of Iron pace instead of an EU3 pace, so it is a totally different mindset. I use tons of automation for my fleets and designs, but I'm not really using it for anything else. It's currently taking me about an hour to play through a year, and it's not even war yet--although to be fair, Legendary Pirates are absolutely rampant right now, and the Orange Shandar empire is being eaten from the inside by silvermists... it's Abundant colonies, so whenever those things get to me, it will be very painful. Beyond that, tech is on Very Expensive, so even though I have this massive empire, my tech still is very basic. I don't even have advanced ion weapons yet. Fortunately, killing Legendary Pirates gives you lots of free tech--I have nearly maxed out phasers right now, which is the main thing keeping me alive despite the pokes and prods coming from all directions. The AI might not be a whiz at war, but it certainly knows how to be passive-aggressive.

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I'm curious: Which tab do you mean? The lower-left-corner of the screen, the one that shows a picture of the ship/world/base you have selected? How do you monitor construction progress from that panel?

Easy! Just select the item you want to monitor, and keep an eye on the box. You don't need to worry about getting lost in the shuffle if you use the forward/back buttons at the top of the tab. Very useful! It's like having bookmarks for stuff you wanted to keep an eye on. Also infinitely useful in battle, where hitting the back button is much easier than finding my fleet again.

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And a further question. How do you defend all the mining bases and whatnot in your territory? Do you put a couple of warship on patrol around each base, or do you use fleets in defense mode, with overlapping circles? Or both?

It's very situational. In this case I lucked out and got close proximity to four different gas fields. The easiest way to make sure your little picket fleets don't become out-of-gas and useless is to put them right on top of a gas mine. Don't use a really big fleet for something far away, unless you really mean business and will keep an eye on that fleet. The first consideration when setting up your defensive network should be "What can I reasonably supply?" The Second should be "What needs to be defended?" Only then do I ask "How many ships?"

*As I said a few posts up, I also use the main construction screen to create a surplus of automated ships that are not part of any fleet. I make as many of these as I can reasonably afford to build, maintain, and fuel. That way when I need a fleet for part of my defensive network, I just pick from my military ships screen (filtered to fleets, looking for (none) and the ship type I want, and distance from the objective). There's no reason not to use posturing with every fleet, even the ones that are just patrolling a planet. At the very least, it will give you a visual marker on the overlay screen so you can check on things at a glance.

Glad you're having so much fun. I'm already thinking about the settings to use for my next game. (My current AAR will wind up fairly soon, I believe....) I'm debating between huge and tiny, scarce and plentiful. I like the idea of a galaxy with few resources and colonies, but I also like the idea of an epic game like yours.

Ah, the back/forward buttons. I do indeed use those to track stuff like construction, so I guess I'd been doing the same thing. But I wish there were a "bookmark" function instead of just back/front. I guess there are ctl-plus-number markers one can use; I haven't tried those yet.

Incidentally, is there a quick way to select & zoom in on something, particularly your home colony's starport? I know P and C cycle through them, but is there a way to hit one button that takes me immediately to my zoomed-in starport? Maybe the ctl-# thing?

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That way when I need a fleet for part of my defensive network, I just pick from my military ships screen (filtered to fleets, looking for (none) and the ship type I want, and distance from the objective).

Hmm, I'll have to try that. I always end up floundering on the main map, picking ships out individually by eyeballing what's closest. You mean the F10 screen, filtered for military ships?

If you have something selected, there are a number of methods you can use to zoom right to it. Clicking on the name in the context box will center your view. Also the lock button. Double-clicking the name in the context box will open up F10 screen with the pertinent details.

For creating fleets, I find my method to be the easiest of many that i've tried. There's no wrong way to queue up your fleets and organize them, truly there isn't. Just "plucking" them out from a pool of already-built and semi-productive ships seems the best way to do it. And yes, from the F10 menu just like you said.

Thanks for the reply, Cube. I'm wondering, though, whether I can select AND zoom with one keystroke. If I'm off looking at some gas cloud, sometimes I want to hit one key and be back at my home starport, zoomed in. I suppose I can use the Ctl-number keys for that?

Excellent thread, GC! I've been using defensive posture correctly, it seems, but got the attack posture totally wrong. It seemed that attack and defense postures were just flip sides of the same coin, almost redundant in a way. Not so after your thread here. Now it all makes sense. Thanks for that!

Excellent thread, GC! I've been using defensive posture correctly, it seems, but got the attack posture totally wrong. It seemed that attack and defense postures were just flip sides of the same coin, almost redundant in a way. Not so after your thread here. Now it all makes sense. Thanks for that!

Yep! No problem, man. Personally I find the postures are most useful for the following two reasons (on the attack):

1.) Allows you to do MASSIVE multi-front assaults without having to micro-manage everything.

2.) Gives you a visual reference for what is going on. This is maybe more important than number one.